Wednesday, May 30, 2012

3 Tips to Help You Stay Motivated and Consistent With Your Writing

Today we have a great guest blogger, Edwin from Celebutaunt, sharing insights on staying motivated and consistent. As summer approaches, I can't think of a better topic to help us beat the "dog days" and move forward! Thanks for joining us Edwin!

Where do writers find a source of constant motivation? Earning a
living is a very good motivator, but honestly this is a shallow well. Things
like boredom, personal time, and other interests will inevitably slink in and
you'll find yourself justifying these things today in exchange for harder work
tomorrow.

Sometimes "tomorrow" happens several days later, which
is symptomatic of a lack of motivation. All writers go through periods of
writer's block, strings of boring topics, and a desire to focus on other things
of interest.

Here are a few tips you can use to keep yourself motivated and
constantly writing.

This
Is Your Real Job

If you're relatively new to freelance writing and expect to make a
living from it, you have to take one very important step. You have to tell
yourself this is your fulltime job and then treat it as such. As simple as this
sounds, countless freelance writers, or more accurately wannabe freelancers, don't
understand this simple fact. As a result they have only moderate—or
worse—success to show for their efforts.

Finding success as a writer takes hard work and discipline and
that starts with setting up a daily schedule. If you worked at a bank, it's
unreasonable to think you can show up at random times, on random days, and
expect to have any measure of success. You'd lose your job before your first
paycheck arrives, yet this is exactly what so many new freelance writers do.

Creating a daily schedule is actually a motivational step. It
changes your writing from "hobby" to "career", which is the
kind of significant shift in mindset it takes to treat writing with serious and
deliberate intent.A career as a writer
is exciting, ever-changing, and financially rewarding. These things serve as
their own forms of motivation, particularly when compared to writing as a
hobby. Hobbies come and go, they can be worked on in your spare time, and
they're easy to forego when they become tedious or boring.

If this sounds familiar to you, chances are you have not
transitioned your mindset from hobby to career.

Vanity
Can Be a Positive Thing

Writers like to hear positive feedback about their work. It's a
natural human desire, and any writer who says they aren't in it for the praise,
at least to some extent, isn't being honest about what motivates them to write.

Seeking feedback from editors and establishing a fan base for your
work is a great source of motivation. The feedback will help your sharpen your
skills, as well as help you write in the style your clients desire.
Professional critique designed to help you master your craft should always be
taken as a positive event. After all, no editor is going to waste their time on
writers who show no promise. They'll simply cut them loose.

If you're receiving regular constructive criticism from the people
soliciting your work, as well as praise for your writing style, grammar skills,
and attention to detail in your articles; you're doing something right and it
should make you feel good. Use this as motivation to write another great
article, and then another, and another. Before you know it you'll be writing
great articles because you know you can, and this is one of the most powerful
motivations a writer can tap.

Diversity
Is Your Friend

Writing about the same things, over and over, will lead to certain
boredom, particularly if you can't find new and interesting angles. A very effective
way to stay motivated as a freelance writer is to write on a wide range of
topics. Not only does this keep your workload fresh and interesting, it forces
you to do some research on new topics, which I find very interesting.

In the same vein as using positive feedback as motivation, you'll
quickly discover that writing great articles on subjects that are new to you
has a domino effect. As a result you'll continually seek new and challenging
assignments which will keep you excited about your career as a writer and fresh
with new ideas for future articles.

Let your editors and other content seekers know that you're
interested in writing on a wide range of topics. This is your career and you're
the one in charge of it. Don't expect them to read your mind or to somehow know
your goals as a writer. When you let them know, you're telling them you're
serious about your career and recognize their role in helping you become
successful.

It's
Hard Work

Freelance writing is hard work, it doesn't come with a lot of
glory, and it requires constant effort on your part to become successful and
stay relevant. Most who attempt freelance writing do so for all the wrong
reasons. Treating what you do as your career, with a schedule for writing and a
desire to constantly improve your skills, will keep you in high demand with editors
and content seekers.

Using the tips above will help you stay motivated, will help you
tap into creative forces that will result in engaging content, and will foster
good writing skills.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share on what keeps you motivated
to keep going consistently every day?

This guest post is by
Edwin who regularly writes about celebrities, TV, and movies for the
Celebutaunt blog on USDish.